Fringe Festival: Dancing To Ancient Rhythms

If you’re a sucker for rainbow headscarves, insistent beats, and sequins, you’ll be instantly charmed by this enthusiastic Fringe Festival contribution from D.C.'s Ancient Rhythms Dance Company. The costumes are dazzling and the performers are all great showmen, though the choreography doesn’t always take advantage of the dancers' energy. When the narrator promises at the show’s opening to dive into “the transcendent and the mundane,” she delivers.

The show takes on a vaguely feminist vibe as it attempts to portray its dancers as alternatively mystic and rebellious figures. One group is introduced as women who leave their chaste community in order to earn money dancing for other villagers, while one of the few solo performances features a young woman snake-handling while she belly rolls and backbends (it's a testament to her skill that she handles the plastic prop convincingly enough to make the snake seem almost alive). The preface, though, led to a confusing moment in which a dancer dons what is identified as the actual burqa of a Taliban-defying Afghani woman, then practically mimics a Halloween ghost before throwing off the cloth and spinning about the stage with a grin.

Most pieces successfully replicate the ragged synchronicity and exuberance of folk dancing, such as the opening number, although by the narrator’s final exhortation to start living your “wild and precious life,” the dancers’ energy was flagging. They rarely stopped smiling, though, and their happiness was contagious; for each less engaging number, there was another one full of flair. Most notable was the unexpected and captivating exorcism dance, as well as the priestess dance, which contained the most innovative choreography of the night.

Dancing to Ancient Rhythms has two remaining performances. Tickets are available online.